I picked it up when it first came out and played for a few weeks before deciding I didn't much like it. Since then I've reinstalled it probably three or four times, wanting to give it another chance, but always end up uninstalling it again shortly after. (To put that into perspective, I still have Tribes 1 installed and have had installs of it on my gaming computers since it first came out.)

I come from a long history of playing Tribes, Q2, UT2004, and BF2142 and yet I couldn't find anything I really liked in Quake Wars: it seems like it's trying to be BF with its classes and respawn times, Tribes with its wide-open areas, and UT/Quake with the speed and twitch factors. I love all of those elements in their respective games, but for me personally it just doesn't work all mish-mashed together in one game.

Another thing that's really bugged me is how forced or scripted each match is. Because the game goes very deliberately from area to area as objectives are completed, it really felt like each round I played in was the same as the last time I'd played it. It seems like other games' CTF or point-control modes lets you decide more how you want to approach the objective, rather than "you must be an engineer and you must blow up objective X to continue". A lot of people seem to love the focus it gives, but it just seems way too "on rails" for my taste.

To be fair, I never played the original Enermy Territory. From what I hear Quake Wars' play style is a lot like it, so I'm sure if you played the original you'd probably have a better appreciation for the new iteration.

The other thing that bugs me about the game is that matches can end way too quickly: if there are good players on the other side who know exactly what to do and what order it need to be done in, a round can start and be done in under five minutes because they've breezed through the objectives progression. That's great for them, but to me that's not fun... It's just frustrating.

For the posts down below about the driving learning curve– is that compared to previous GTAs (e.g. the driving mechanics have changed in IV) or are you new to GTA and thus not used to the game's driving mechanics?

(I haven't played IV and won't until I eventually get a next-gen system, but am curious if the driving curve is due to newness to the series or a change inherent to IV.)

I'm not going to let any load times make or break a game for me. It's always something.

Normally I'd agree... But when literally 50% of your time "playing" a game is spent staring at a loading screen, that's a little nuts. From what I hear, what's worse is that there are the long loading screens for everything, including entering or leaving a simple interior space. Now that's just silly.